IntoNow for iPhone – Tag and share live TV shows (Shazam for TV)

We live in a world where most people use their mobile gadgets and devices — you know, smartphones, tablets (like the iPad), and even laptop or netbook computers — whilst getting their daily television fix, and that’s precisely the kind of world where iPhone apps like IntoNow can make it easy to tag TV shows and share your boob-tube watching habits with your friends. Today, IntoNow is launching their first iPhone and iPad app, simply called “IntoNow,” to help you identify TV shows with nothing more than a click of a button. You can then connect with your network of friends to find out which shows you’re watching now, which shows you’re currently obsessed with, and even which shows both you and you friend have already viewed. Think of it as Shazam (or SoundHound) for your TV.

See what your friends are up to

On the off chance that you’re not totally familiar with Shazam, it’s an iPhone and Android app that allows you to identify songs playing on the radio (or in the club) by “listening” to the sound of the music and comparing it to Shazam’s music fingerprint database. IntoNow does the same thing, but it does it with TV shows.

The app was created on top of the SoundPrint platform, which takes audio streams from television shows and matches that audio with a particular show. And, like all great startup services and apps, IntoNow was birthed in a garage in Palo Alto by no more than a couple handfuls of engineers.

It works like this: turn on your TV and start watching a live or pre-recorded show, then fire up the IntoNow app, then simply tap the green button in the center of the app and wait for IntoNow to listen and identify the show. The app will analyze the audio coming from your TV and compare it with its database of live and archived TV shows in real-time. The result is the ability to “tag” (identify) anything from a live and breaking news broadcast to a pre-recorded episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air – and it all happens in just a handful of seconds.

What makes this app different from all the other social TV-watching apps and services out there is that IntoNow doesn’t require you to type out a show name or go searching for the show for which you’d like to “check in.” Since the IntoNow app uses the audio from the show, you get fast and accurate identifications with little more than a simple button tap. This does a couple things: it allows you to tag multiple shows on a whim with just a single finger, and it helps keep everyone in your social network synced up. Never again will your friend miss your tweet about “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” because he was searching for “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

Then, once you’ve tagged a show, you can do a few cool things with that info. You can find out more information about a show (season, episode, description. You can tap a link to find out even more info at IMDB. If available, you can add the show to your Netflix Instant Watch Queue. And, you can even buy the show on iTunes. On the social side of things, you can share your thoughts about that show via Facebook or Twitter or the IntoNow app itself. You can check out what your friends are watching and which shows they’ve already watched. You can even find out which shows you and your friend have both watched.

Basically, IntoNow helps you coordinate your TV watching habits with your friends. And it all happens in real time.

The best part, though, is that IntoNow can tag live television in real-time. We mentioned that multiple times already, but it’s just such a cool feature, that we thought we’d mention it one last time.

Oh, and we have to hand it to IntoNow for their great choice of company name.